Anti-corruption: Reducing opportunities for bribery in Nigeria

A backlog of uncollected driving licences may prompt Nigerians to drive without a legal permit, encouraging them to use bribes if stopped by traffic police.

According to the principle of loss aversion, we dislike losses more than we like gains of an equivalent amount. Emphasising what people are likely to lose rather than what they are likely to gain can prompt behavioural change.

We worked with the Federal Road Safety Corps in Nigeria to develop and test two text messages to increase the number of people who pick up their driving licence.

One message used loss aversion by informing the recipient that they had already paid for their licence.

The loss aversion message more than doubled the number of people who collected their licence.